42

They cleared a long strip at the edge of the woods, a long rip of raw earth. The fire was creeping closer. He could hear it, now, snapping, tinder bursting.

Heat. The sun was a hole filled with it. Every breath was choked with powdered bleach. His tongue was a dry, dead, dust-saturated leaf. He was using, he realized, the same shovel he had used to bury Asquith.

His weapon, his still nameless blade. This battle was prehistoric, a struggle that had always gone on, long before his own life, and would continue long afterward. He used this tool to cut a firepath around the cottages, and when he looked up Sarah had a long scythe, like a mower in a classical etching, and she sliced the brush with a high, ringing sound. The brush shuddered for an instant, and the blurred shapes of small animals burst passed them. They were rabbits, abandoning the woods, he knew, but they might have been sprites or demigods, driven to the point of frenzy.

For some reason the fire was holding off, simmering beyond sight. It was like a deliberate enemy, stealthy, the soul of malice. Speke had the uneasy sensation that it was creeping just below the surface of the land, roiling under their feet. Still, he could see no flames, only the powerful countryside of smoke, billowing into the air.

The work made it hard to think, and hard to remember. Work, he told himself. Fight. The enemy was still only a rumble, a distant avalanche, and the singed flavor of the air. The quaking air around them swept upward, now, hauled toward the sun by the rising heat.

He needed Sarah. He had been stupid to pretend otherwise. How could a man be stupid for fifteen years? Stupid was the only word for it. Stupid and oblivious to the truth. But that was all in the past. He could not think about the past.

The dust rose about them, earth rising upward to become a part of the sky. Speke took her arm, interrupting her mowing. A last spring of sliced oats sang from the curved blade, and rained to earth. “There’s nothing more we can do,” he said.

If the firebreaks they had torn so quickly did not stop the fire … He leaned on the shovel. The thought was too ugly to complete.

“It’ll be all right, Ham,” she said. She was gray with dust, and her eyes were gleaming. She bore the scythe like the spirit of life.

It will be all right. That was her refrain, her repeated promise. He had always disliked easy optimism. The giddy faith many people had that good times were just around the corner had always struck him as childish, or even stupid. Some promises, Speke knew, are false, and to believe in them is dangerous. Part of him wanted to laugh. How could it be all right? We’re going to die here! But her faith was steady, cool, honest. She seemed to believe, as Speke did, that the fight was everything, the refusal to surrender all that mattered.

“You’ll see.” Her voice had always been like soothing medicine to him. The sound of her strengthened him again.

He found himself smiling, his face a mask, he knew, of grime, soot, clay. Just like hers. As he worked he uncovered lost secrets, an old shotgun shell, a weathered husk with a black copper tip. Two old shells, forty-five caliber he judged without giving them a second glance, tossed, ancient and spent, from the shovel. He overturned a dry divot and a centipede writhed for a instant before it vanished, and at one point the translucent pod of a rattlesnake’s rattle, long abandoned by the snake itself, spun to a stop at his feet.

The shovel dropped with a clatter, and her scythe fell. He put his arms around her. He never wanted to leave this place. But the place he wanted was not the land. It was Sarah. It was this moment, this inner landscape.

A surreal flock tossed in the branches. But these were not birds.

The fire had come.

Other flames flung across the firebreak, as easily as tossed coins. Smoke boiled under their feet, and the fire danced before them, around them.

They beat it down with their tools, stamped the errant fires that sputtered on the lawn, but then with a rush a crowd of flames forced them staggering backwards, eyebrows singed.

She shouted something, warning or encouragement, he could not tell.

The Outer Office was hidden behind a leaping tangle of flames. Maria’s body, and Asquith’s—the fire had them both. The knowledge was a blow to the stomach, to the soul. The bodies were burning.

“I’m going to climb the roof,” he cried.

She leaned forward, eager, hungry for his words, straining to hear like someone in a blizzard. He directed her to one of the garden wells, far away from the rumble of the fire. “And then you run,” he cried. “Take one of the deer paths. Run away! Save your life!”

His old friend had won. But he had not won entirely. There was still a little fragment of Hamilton Speke left. He used a ladder from the shed, propped over the door to Sarah’s office. The roof was even hotter than the ground, and heat waves fluttered off it, making the chimney seem to dance. He slipped, and nearly fell, but caught the peak.

The hose snaked away from his outstretched hand. He could not reach it. The thing was trying to escape. The nozzle bounced along, down the shingled slope.

He plunged after it, nearly rolling from the eave. And caught it.

“Turn on the water,” he called, his voice lost in the wind.

The hose rasped and twitched. There was a gurgle, but no water. The sky dirtied. Ashes circled downward. The air tasted foul. In the amount of time it took to inhale, the world grew dark.

A long drape, like fine, dark silk stretched across the sky. It extended over his head, far to the north. The sun tightened into a hard, red coin.

Ashes rained on the roof, fine white dust that covered the hairs of his arms. A larger ash spun to his feet, smoldering. Another spat and sizzled, until his foot killed it. An ash licked his eye, blinding him for a moment.

“There isn’t any water coming out of the hose,” he called.

Her voice responded, a cry far below that he couldn’t make out.

“No water!” he called.

A long ribbon of gold worked the hillside to the west, beyond Sarah’s cottage. It ran like a liquid thing, unpeeling perfect blackness. The black streamed white smoke. Wind gathered in the trees, as though the plants were breathing, taking long, deep breaths and letting them go.

Wind! His jaw clenched. The wind is rising. It was driving the fire closer, whipping it forward.

“Water!” he cried, the wind snuffing his voice.

It was in there, far within the estate, a secret lake, an aquifer buried and ripe with promise, a sliced melon of cool far beneath the heat. He uttered the word again, for the sound of it, for its magic: water.

The hose choked, and then gushed a fountain of warm water which was, almost at once, cool. Good well water, Speke said to himself. Of course Sarah would know how to get water from the land—that was exactly the sort of miracle she had mastered long ago. Water from the inside world. He wanted to talk to it, call to it, scream to the water to come on and help them, water god, long-ignored though he had been. They needed him now.

Surely Bell would have alerted a fire crew by now. Surely help was on its way.

Sarah leaped to the roof from the top of the ladder. He tried to wave her away. “Run!” he called. “Don’t stay here.” The house will be surrounded soon, and then what will you do? Save yourself while you can.

He did not say this. A sound silenced him before he could utter the words. There was an explosion as a tree, a stately blue gum, flashed into flame. They both watched as the fire poured to another eucalyptus, and wrapped it. The speed was amazing, even beautiful. The tree was a spiral of flame. There was a report like a shot as the heart of the tree split.

This is how I die, then, he thought. Fighting for my house. He would fight well. If only Sarah would run, while there was still a chance. The fire had chosen a tough man to seek out and destroy. This is going to be hard for you, fire, because I don’t fear a thing.

As he thought it, he laughed. It was true. Death meant nothing to him. How could it? He grinned into the smoke and sprayed the smoldering ashes as they fell. Death was attacking, and he was killing it wherever it fell.

Let it come.

Sarah folded her arms and gazed into the wind that drove the fire. She wanted to be nowhere but exactly where she was. She blinked her eyes against the smoke. If this was the way Hamilton Speke was to die, she would go with him. She had been a stranger to herself for too long.

The fire surrounded the house, and began to close upon them.